The persecution of people for their weight is a serious problem that should be addressed by government and civil society. But the ideal of ending fat discrimination faces some profound difficulties. This…
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Late last week football (soccer) website football365.com reported that FIFA, the international governing body for the world game, is considering forcing referees to pass fitness tests prior to games. This…
After a longish lull, the ghastly images emanating from Houla have re-focused world attention on Syria and its rapidly deteriorating internal condition, as Mat Hardy pointed out on The Conversation yesterday…
British novelist E M Forster famously offered two cheers for democracy. We might say the same about the national Privacy Amendment (Enhancing Privacy Protection) Bill introduced into Parliament last week…
Despite recent commentary in the media, Australia’s proclamation of its extended continental shelf does not represent new “claims” in Antarctica and does not contravene the Antarctic Treaty. With Australia…
What do Novak Djokovic’s tennis racket, Mark Webber’s F1 car and the new Boeing 787 have in common? They all extensively rely on composite materials. A composite material is a strategic combination of…
The 2011 UN High-Level Meeting on Non-Communicable Disease (NCD) Prevention and Control marked an all-time high in the recognition of the devastating toll of the global NCD epidemic. But much remains to…
The eyes and ears of the global health world were firmly fixed on Geneva last week for the 2012 World Health Assembly, the annual meeting of the World Health Organization’s (WHO) member states. One of…
The numbers are just in. At a time when we need to be urgently reducing our CO₂ emissions, we are now emitting more than at any time in human history. However, it’s not too late to turn things around…
“A third of workers waste quarter of their day” - Herald Sun. “Wasted work time costs billions a year” - The Age. Judging from these headlines, you would think Australian workers are chronic time wasters…
Following the refusal of the federal government to commit to the Gonski Review and the recent announcement in Victoria of further cuts to already disadvantaged schools and students, the issue of equity…
Sitting between the two hot potatoes of immigration control and labour market regulation, work visas are an inherently controversial public policy issue. It is therefore of little surprise that Immigration…
Across Australia, landholders are signing conservation agreements or covenants to protect biodiversity on their property. These agreements, offered by state governments, create private protected areas…
Opposition Health spokesman Peter Dutton has called Medicare Locals “an extra layer of bureaucracy”, and signalled the Coalition will remove them if it’s elected. His conclusion that they’re a waste of…
Women have the right to determine what happens to their bodies; and this includes where and how they give birth. But from July 2013, private midwives may not be able to legally provide their services to…
While the photos currently coming out of Houla look like scenes of an apocalypse, anyone with Syrian friends or connections has seen equally horrifying videos and photos circulating on Facebook or Youtube…
Five months before the American presidential election, one thing is clear: Obama wants this to be a referendum on venture capitalism. Last week the Obama camp sharpened its attack on the business record…
On Friday, we learned that South Africa and Australia/New Zealand will jointly host the Square Kilometre Array (SKA) radio telescope, rather than the facility going to just one of the bids. The split-site…
Trade liberalisation has pulled many developing countries into emerging markets in the last decade. Jim O’Neil, an economist and chairman of Goldman Sachs, who forecast global economic domination by certain…
Millions of women around the world have used the combined oestrogen and progestogen oral contraceptive pill to protect themselves from pregnancy for more than fifty years. The overall risk of reproductive-aged…
The front page of Saturday’s edition of the Sydney Morning Herald on the weekend was dominated by a story about the actor Rachel Griffiths and her husband, artist Andrew Taylor “playing swapsies” with…
Last week’s Health of Australian Science report, by the Chief Scientist of Australia Ian Chubb, has again highlighted the issue of declining student engagement in science in primary and secondary schools…
The Earth’s principal climatic zones appear to be shifting poleward. If this continues, as climate models project, the weather patterns that give rise to deserts in the subtropics, and stormy wet weather…
When we talk of conserving an animal species what do we actually mean? We are likely to have in mind a vision of a rhinoceros (or any other species, for that matter) being given the opportunity to pursue…
The way petrol is priced in Australia has been a perennially vexed issue. Earlier this month, the Australian Competition and Consumer Commission (ACCC) announced it would launch an inquiry into price-sharing…